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Daley has worked with Matthew Libatique, ASC, on Spike Lee features, commercials and the dailies for Black Swan. "Matty is my age so he prefers to communicate electronically:We'll text each other and send still frames back and forth," he says. Up-and-coming DP Jody Lee Lipes has also partnered with Daley on several long- and short-form projects, the latest being HBO's new series, Girls. "We work on tests, then he lets me do my thing," Daley reports."That allows him to focus on shooting and not worry about how things are looking because I know how he's exposing the images and have a sense of what he's going for.Any cine- matographer you work with frequently has to have faith that you know what the look is, what they're intending." Although Daley had worked with Edward Lachman,ASC, on commercials, he recently teamed with him on their first long-form project: the dailies and final color correction for HBO's original miniseries,Mildred Pierce, which has netted Lachman — and many others — an Emmy nomination. "Ed's a phone person: He calls me in the middle of a shoot, in the middle of the night, in a van on the way home," laughs Daley. "I've never worked with a cinematographer who is more passion- ate about every frame he exposes.Working with me on the dailies he'd describe how to help highlight or shadow areas or tell me what to defer until later in post. He called me 'another member of his lighting team.'" Lachman insisted that Daley be free for both the dailies and final color, which meant keeping Daley's schedule clear for just shy of a year. Daley says that Lachman appreciates his film background."He can communicate in stops and printer lights with me, and I can speak to him in those terms," notes the colorist. Lachman shot Super 16mm for Mildred Pierce to retain the grain seen in older movies."It was director Todd Haynes's idea that the miniseries look like it was made in the 1970s about Los Angeles in the 1930s. There are very specific references to films made in the '70s." Haynes and Lachman also pored over the early color photography of Saul Leiter for inspiration, attracted to his composition, subjects and use of reflections. Daley's close communication with Lachman during production enabled him to compile "a mental list of what scenes and shots needed more attention" so there were no big surprises in post."Because I had worked on the dailies I could work on my own a good deal for the final," he points out. The dailies proved to be "a solid foundation" that Daley, Lachman and Haynes could build upon in the final color correction."Ed likes to work in yellow-green hues, so we pushed scenes more in that direction for the final," Daley recalls. "Todd likes darkness and shadow. I was surprised at how dark he asked me to take scenes: Usually directors prefer scenes played brighter so the audience can better see the actors' facial expressions, but Todd really responds to the drama of darkness and shadows." In the first love scene between Mildred and Monty Beregon in the latter's beach house, Haynes asked Daley to alter the time of day."It was lit in produc- tion to be sunset, but Todd wanted more time to have passed from the previous beach scene. So we had to make it look as if the sun had just gone down and they were in a cooler light," Daley explains."There was a bluescreen outside the window representing the beach plate. It was tricky to get all the elements to work together: to make sure we had the time of day Todd wanted, that the ac- tors still looked good, that everything still looked romantic." Mildred's scheming daughter Vida's opera scene featured some colored back- grounds on stage that were slightly out of the film's color palette."So we had to iso them as they were constantly changing luminence and hues and swing more into the period palette to better match the wardrobe and art direction," says Daley. The colorist performed the dailies color correction on a Spirit 2K telecine with Da Vinci 2K Plus; the final color was done on Autodesk Lustre, which allowed him to "freely move about the timeline" with Haynes, whose availability in sessions was limited since he was simultaneously editing and mixing the miniseries. Lachman cleared his personal schedule to stay throughout the process and ensure the grading reflected his intentions as the cinematographer."Ed was ex- acting and tenacious, and I had a great experience working with him," Daley says. "I'm looking forward to the next time he calls me at 3 o'clock in the morning!" CRAZY, STUPID LOVE Jan Yarbrough, senior DI colorist/technical director at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, or MPI (www.warnerbros.com), finds that DPs typically want to be part of the DI color session if the project's budget and the cinematographer's schedule allow him to participate.Time and money are also factors in how much prepro planning takes place. "If I'm lucky, I get a call or two early on from a cinematographer who says he's thinking of using a particular camera or shooting a certain way — is that some- thing we'll be able to handle?" he reports."Then I usually don't see him until the edit is almost complete or they need plates for visual effects." Yarbrough will soon get a chance to renew the relationship he established with DP Charles Minsky,ASC, on Garry Marshall's film, Valentine's Day. Minsky has finished shooting Marshall's New Year's Eve and, since he lives locally, already dropped by as Yarbrough started work on the feature's VFX shots. Darkness & Shadows: Technicolor NY's Sam Daley (right) worked with DP Edward Lachman on HBO's . "When a cinematographer comes back you al- ready know their personality and can hit the ground running," he says."Charles has his own sense of humor and is a real de- light to work with. He doesn't have to say more than two or three words of a sentence and I know where he's going. By the time he finishes the sentence I'm already there." Yarbrough notes that Minsky shot New Year's Eve with Arri Alexa."It's our first time seeing production images with that camera," he says. "They're pretty im- pressive. I've liked what I've seen for the VFX sequences." The colorist forged a new relationship with UK-based Andrew Dunn, BSC, when he teamed with him for a week-and-a-half on the romantic comedy Crazy Stupid Love, which opened in late July. Dunn shot 35mm color negative 3-perf. "He was cautious at first," says Yarbrough. "He told me he didn't enjoy previ- ous post experiences where colorists didn't look at his notes and told him what to do.We sat down and tried to get an understanding of how we wanted to play the color in this movie, and after the first day we understood where each of us was.Andrew is a true professional and it was a great pleasure working with him." Comedies often want a bright look without a lot of mood, notes Yarbrough. "But Andrew wanted the opposite.A good bit of the film takes place in a singles- type bar, and the directors [Glenn Ficarra and John Requa] and Andrew wanted to keep the moody look of a bar.We did some painting with [FilmLight's] Base- light to create even more pools of light than Andrew shot, and he was quite happy with the result. It's commonplace now to do a lot of light painting to cre- ate depth and dimension." For the montage where star Steve Carell, who's divorcing and suddenly back in the dating pool, gets a makeover,Yarbrough and Dunn tried several different ways to set the sequence apart."We went from really stylized to progressing from a www.postmagazine.com August 2011 • Post 21 Mildr ed Pier ce